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"There are more technical jobs open than qualified candidates to fill them." I love how virulent memes just get reiterated as fact once they reach a certain cr

• vacri 13y ago
  Coursera has a lot of intro-level courses, but not really much in-depth stuff. I remember being at the end of my degree and a bunch of us were sitting in the cafeteria complaining about how we hadn't learned anything. Then we realised that we were just talking about facts (and of which we had actually learned a lot - especially about underlying systems rather than factoids), but we had ignored a ton of soft skills in terms of research, collaboration, scientific procedure and rigor, self-expression, critique of other's work rigor, ethics, and plenty more I can't think of right now. In particular, it taught us how to learn further. This is a skill that a lot of people don't have. There are plenty of autodidacts, but they are definitely a small minority of people. A smattering of online courses doesn't cover most of these items in the same manner or depth. It was certainly more than 'an old boys network', especially for me, since I have kept in contact with 0 people from those days. Is it worth 300k? Maybe not[1]. But I didn't pay for a US university, and I've seen here on HN that there are claims that such sky-high figures are not the norm, and that there are plenty of ways to get cheaper degree-level education. [1]Well, it was 'worth 300k' in a way - it changed who I was as a person for the better, and the way I look at new information. But I wouldn't have gone 300k into debt at the time. I did go about 40k into debt though (via HECS)
  • riggins 13y ago
    Coursera has a lot of intro-level courses, but not really much in-depth stuff. that depends on your definition of intro-level. Take CS. Yes they have intro level stuff Learn to Program | An Introduction to Interactive Programming In Python Then they have classes that require prior knowledge princeton algorithms | stanford algorithms | functional programming | programming languages then more advanced class like probabilistic graphical models | compilers | information theory | neural networks | reactive programming | analytical combinatorics Plus this is just the first wave. You can see that they're organizing classes so they go deeper with their specialization tracks. And its natural that professor's would create the introductory courses first ... because obviously one has to learn the fundamentals before you can proceed to more advanced classes. Furthermore, I expect that the next round of classes you'll start to see more advanced materials. Robert Ghrist who's created the UPenn Intro to Calculus class said his goal is to create a MOOC in topology (his specialty).
• WalterBright 13y ago
  You have to be careful about counting jobs and engineers and declaring a shortage or surplus - because those statistics contain an implicit assumption that engineers are all the same and are completely interchangeable. In my career, I've seen absolutely enormous variation in the productivity of various engineers. This includes pathetically incompetent ones that graduated from top-name engineering schools. Quite a few engineers are negatively productive - they subtract value. Bad engineering can cost a company terribly, even destroy it. It is true that if you're willing to pay enough, you can hire anyone. But that doesn't mean there isn't a shortage, as the supply of competent engineers didn't increase by one. It just meant that another firm didn't get the person you hired.
• mbesto 13y ago
  >Labor has never been in such high supply, and it has never been cheaper. But qualified labor is in short supply, and it's never been more expensive. > "There are more technical jobs open than qualified candidates to fill them." I'm going to be very pedantic here. This statement is in fact true. Had the word "qualified" been taken out, then you are absolutely right, there is no shortage. However, the problem with STEM jobs isn't the lack of "on-paper" qualifications, but rather "off-paper" qualifications. Everyone wants the next Facebook engineer, but they are in limited supply. Case in point? Me. On paper, I've written web apps in Rails, Python, JS, and PHP for 5 years now, but I do not consider myself on par with my technical co-founder. On paper I am 100% qualified to fill a majority of these positions, but in reality, I'm not. Our expectations are offset by the stories we hear daily about Dropbox, Facebook, Google, etc. We are just seeing starting to approach the bend of the hockey stick in the "software is eating the world". It's only until we have a large quantity of qualified engineers when the hockey stick starts shooting upwards.
  • FD3SA 13y ago
    This is another perception issue that I keep encountering. The job description you've written above is for an extremely senior engineer, what some would call a product architect (e.g. your co-founder), not a fresh graduate. In fact, being a new graduate is now, by your own admission, considered to be an unacceptable level of training for a "Facebook engineer". This is corporate bullshit, and you've fallen for it. If companies want someone who has mastered a technological stack, this is not an "engineer". This is an architect. And this position should be paid significantly more than an engineer. Although you may not consider yourself a competent engineer by the "Facebook standard", not only are you a competent engineer, but a senior engineer by every definition of the word. The fact that your evaluation of your own competence is so warped by corporate PR is extremely worrisome. What I see here is that the bar for the definition of "competent engineer" keeps going higher and higher, without a commensurate increase in salary. This is a classic symptom of excess supply.
    • mbesto 13y ago
      > This is corporate bullshit I spent 4 years at the largest business software company in the world and have spent 3 years on and off in very small (3 employee) startups. I would presume my bullshit meter is fairly well tuned. > you've fallen for it. I haven't. I tried finding a technical co-founder that didn't cost me an arm and leg, and it's taken me 6 years to do so. (YMMV) > This is an architect. And this position should be paid significantly more than an engineer. This is laughable. I've seen more architects in my day than most people have seen sales people. Just type in "SAP Architect" on any job search and compare it to the number you get for "Rails Architect". Architects are the bullshit powerpoint pushers I used to see day in and day out in Enterprise IT, who, after 5 years of never coding or implementing, fell short of guiding their dev teams because they couldn't keep up with the ever-changing technology stack. You know who should be paid more than anyone else? The person that can build a small team, make crazy revenue in a very short (relative) amount of time. It doesn't matter what you call those people, but they do exist, are in short supply and should be compensated equal to their productive output. > What I see here is that the bar for the definition of "competent engineer" keeps going higher and higher, without a commensurate increase in salary. Actually this has more to do with time than anything. The Next Big Startup™, can't afford to spend 6 months on software, when they can higher Rockstar Dev Mcgee™ who can create it for them in 1-2 months. Lastly, I'm failing to see the motive behind "corporate bullshit" you speak of. Google and Facebook do not want to pay these insane salaries, so it's in their interest to actually (1) have a large supply and (2) promote that there is a large supply, not the opposite. Their compensation packages are a direct effect of the shortage of supply of qualified talent. If this "corporate bullshit" is being lead by a small amount of vocal developers who are artificially padding their salaries by crying "supply shortage", then this is far from being "corporate". The question ultimately becomes, what is our idea of "competent". From what I've seen, there is massive demand for people to create the next AirBnB/Dropbox/etc, which requires some very talented individuals to run and maintain. The other 99% clones of those companies that fail are because they don't have those competent people. So it's a loser's game with a bunch of people who demand that they win. Thus, the situation we are in. EDIT: This video by Gabe Newell says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=12m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=12m20s (from about 12:20 to 16:00 - these "least correctly valued" people are no longer incorrect valued, that's my point)
• geebee 13y ago
  "There are more technical jobs open than qualified candidates to fill them." I don't understand how people can make this statement without considering price. Really thoughtful people, too. I'm not joking, people who seem very intelligent and thoughtful say this - "there are more tech jobs open than qualified candidates to fill them [unstated: at the price employers want to pay]" The example people often use is trying to buy a car. I'm willing to pay $5,000 for a used car, I insist on a mercedes in excellent shape with fewer than 10,000 miles, and I state that "there are more people trying to buy a car than quality cars to purchase". All those seemingly rational people who say things like "There are more technical jobs open than qualified candidates to fill them" would tell me I'm being unrealistic about the market. Yet they talk about software developers being in short supply without considering the salary at which they are in short supply.